Dragons? I’m good with that.

But will someone please explain to me why Daenerys Targaryen is not horribly, horribly sunburned?

She has no melanin. Look at her.  I mean, I get sunburned sitting outside at my niece’s graduation for two hours. She is in an equatorial environment with bare shoulders.

Why is she not bright, bright red, with blisters and peeling skin?

The time when springbok pronk for joy.

The Rules,

As a former award-winning corporate copywriter, Stacey Kade has written about everything from backhoe loaders to breast pumps. But she prefers to make things up instead. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, Greg, and their two retired racing greyhounds, Tall Walker (Walker) and SheWearsThePants (Pansy).

via Mary Robinette Kowal and Stacey Kade | The Book Cellar.

There are numerous local cultures surrounding writers, writing groups, and the conventions that writers attend. These cultural peculiarities influence the writing that emerges from those areas.

As writers, it’s important to be aware that this is happening. As a podcast crew, we’re aware that it’s happening around us, and in many cases because of us. We talk about some of the cultures we’ve been embedded in, how they’ve influenced us, and how we have, in some cases reacted against those cultures.

We also talk about how we can conduct ourselves when participating at conventions, again, with care taken to assess the nature of the cultures in which we’re stepping into.

via Writing Excuses 8.19: Writing and Convention Culture » Writing Excuses.

And yes, I might preview Book 4 while I’m there.

Boswell Book Company
2559 North Downer Avenue
Milwaukee,WI 53211

(414) 332-1181

Many of Jane Austen’s contemporary readers consider her magical. Mary Robinette Kowal went one step further and made her so.

Jane Ellsworth, the Austen-inspired heroine of three Kowal novels to date, lives the kind of British Regency era life an Austen character might have, with a delightful exception: She’s a glamourist, a professional magician who creates illusions by manipulating strands of the ether, that mysterious medium people once thought filled the air.

Kowal visits Milwaukee on Monday to read from her new novel “Without a Summer” (Tor, $24.99), in which Jane brings her younger sister Melody to London for “the season” in the hope of finding her a husband – and in which Jane and her husband, David Vincent, also a glamourist, battle a conspiracy that preys on public fears about an unusual cold spell.

Kowal is also a professional puppeteer. Her author visit to Boswell Book Company will include a short puppet show connected to a story in one of her books.

Read the full Book Review: ‘Without a Summer’ by Mary Robinette Kowal.

Quail Ridge Books
3522 Wade Avenue
Raleigh,NC 27607

I’m coming with the full Regency costume and the tiny little puppet show.

Please come? If you can’t make it out, they can take pre-orders and I’ll sign the book while I’m there.

919.828.1588
books@quailridgebooks.com

Click to listen to the: Without a Summer sample

The actual audiobook is eight and a half hours of listening to me tell you a story about Luddites, winter, and the Regency. Oh, and magic.

The way you enter is very simple. There’s a new credit waiting for me in my account at Audible.com and I’m seeking suggestions on what to listen to next.  All you have to do is to post in the comments the title of your favorite audiobook , on Audible, and at least one thing about why you love it.  You may wax as rhapsodic as you like. (Make sure that when you fill out the form that you use your correct email.)

On Monday, May 13th, at noon Central, I’ll pick one of those recommendations randomly and the person who recommended it will get an audible.com copy of Without a Summer.

Our featured author for issue 3 is Mary Robinette Kowal, a Campbell and Hugo award winning author, who has just released the third book in her Glamourist History series, Without a Summer. When she’s not writing, she’s quite often busy doing voice acting, having recorded for authors such as Kage Baker, Cory Doctorow, and John Scalzi. She’s also a professional puppeteer.

We caught up with her during her recent book tour and asked her about her thoughts on everything from puppetry to pod-casting.

Read the full interview here: A Chat with Mary Robinette Kowal.

One of my writing buddies in Chicago has a debut novel. Wesley Chu’s The Lives of Tao is sort of like Mission Impossible, if the team were possessed by hyper-intelligent aliens. You want action, conspiracy, and some humor? That’s what Wes is aiming to provide.

So what’s his Favorite bit?

WESLEY CHU

Choosing My Favorite Bit is especially difficult for a first novel. After all, a debut is very special to an author, kind of like that first stuffed animal, first kiss, or that first Nintendo console. So for The Lives of Tao, I hemmed and hawed, trying to decide which of my precious tidbits to favor.

Do I choose the friendship that develops when Tao inhabits Roen and whips him into secret spy shape? Do I go with the humorous dialogue that is peppered throughout the book, or how about protagonist Roen Tan’s journey from overweight loser to suave super spy? The choice is like asking Michelle Duggar to pick which one of her nineteen (last time I checked) kids she likes best.

At the end of the day, I decided to choose one specific scene to be My Favorite Bit that I feel encompasses many of my other favorite parts of the book. It’s the scene where Roen got jumped by a team of Genjix at a nightclub and barely escaped with his life. Now, is this truly my favorite scene because I enjoy kicking my main character’s butt? I do admit to finding a perverse enjoyment writing him getting beaten up, but that’s not the reason why it’s my favorite scene.

See, you have to get to know Roen before he met Tao, the Prophus alien that inhabits him. Pre-Tao, Roen was an overweight loser who meandered his way through life. Life didn’t kick Roen down; he did that all by himself. He had many opportunities to succeed, but he simply thoughtlessly blew every single one of them. He had big dreams, but was too weak and lazy to realize them. He’s the guy sitting at the bar watching the world pass him by, thinking, “I coulda been someone. I coulda been a contenda.”

Well, he wasn’t a contender, and was just doing the minimum to scrape through life. Then Tao came along and put him to work. From months of dieting to daily morning workouts to combat training to forcing Roen to talk to the girl he was crushing, Tao pushed him to his limits and forced him to stand outside of his self-imposed comfortable bubble that had become his daily life. And of course Roen dragged his feet, whined, and pouted all the way. Roen and Tao got into their fair share of mental scuffles, which, of course, made it all the more traumatic when it took place in his head. It’s not like you could lock yourself in the bedroom, after all.

Eventually, Roen bought into Tao’s guidance. Slowly, his outlook on life changed. Little by little, Roen grew stronger, became healthier, and found confidence. He began to transform into that person he could have always been. Now, having an all-wise alien giving him advice might seem like cheating, but really, it’s all Roen. Tao just gave him directions. Roen earned his own successes.

So what does this have anything to do with Roen getting jumped at a nightclub and getting his butt kicked? Everything. Because Roen fought back. Because he didn’t crumple like wet tissue when the going got tough. The new Roen still pretty much came out beaten to a pulp, but he was able to keep his wits about him and find a way to escape. That scene was the one moment when Roen turned the corner to becoming a dynamic character. He proved to himself that he could change. That all that hard work paid off and that he did change. It was the moment that made everything else in the book possible.

There’s a belief in people who practice contact sports that a person’s mettle isn’t tested until the first time he takes a hit. Does he step back? Freeze? Cover up? Or does he fight back? In Roen’s case, he took a punch, and for the first time in his life, he stood up for himself and fought back. And that fighting back made all the difference in the world.

RELEVANT LINKS:

The Lives of Tao:  amazon | b&n | audible

BIO:

Wesley Chu was born in Taiwan and immigrated to Chicago, Illinois when he was just a pup. It was there he became a Kung Fu master and gymnast.

Wesley is an avid gamer and a contributing writer for the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. A former stunt man and a member of SAG, he can also be seen in film and television playing roles such as “Banzai Chef” in Fred Claus and putting out Oscar worthy performances as a bank teller in Chicago Blackhawks commercials.

Besides working as an Associate Vice President at a bank, he spends his time writing and hanging out with his wife Paula Kim and their Airedale Terrier, Eva.

Mostly what I’m looking for though are large story issues. In particular, things that:

1. Confuse you
2. You don’t believe
3. You are bored by
4. You think are cool

In other words, what I’m looking for is your reader reaction. I should note that for those of you who are interested in process, this is a raw draft. Basically I’ve hit The End and posted it. It’s also something that I wrote specifically to be read aloud, so I handle the text a little differently, knowing that a narrator will be involved.

Here’s the teaser for “Forest of Memory.”

[Note to narrator and director: The main character, Katya, is in her early thirties. She's lived her entire life connected to the web and this is the first time she's telling something from memory, instead of being able to look at old footage. The telling of the story should sound as naturalistic as possible. I want stumbles and places where it's halting as if she's reaching for the right words. I have stage notes in brackets and at times for non-verbal lines, like [aggravated noise]. Please act those instead of reading them. ]

So.
So, I just want to reiterate the terms of our deal before we begin. My name is Katya Gould and I am agreeing to an exclusive with you, Username:Docent. I confirm that I have not told the full story before and will not. You agree that you will not share the experience with anyone. By “story” I mean the recounting of the three days that I spent in the company of the man I knew as “Johnny.”

Now that we’re clear on that, give me a moment to confirm that your payment is in my account… Got it. Thank you.

[deep breath, settling herself]

One of the questions you had wanted me to talk about was “Why.” Why am I telling this now after so much time has passed. The answer is that I’m not entirely certain. It may be a terrible idea.

He said he wanted witnesses, but no records. I thought he meant that I shouldn’t tell anyone what I saw in the woods, but I keep thinking about it and I think I was wrong. A witness is someone who reports what they observed, right? So, what he wanted was for me to tell you what I saw. To tell someone. Maybe everyone… I don’t know.
There’s a chance that agreeing to an exclusive is the wrong choice.

It’s so strange trying to remember without being able to pull up the recording and just look at it. I keep turning that those three days over in my head so that, in some ways, they’re sharper than any other memory in my life. In other ways, I think I’m wearing the edges off the memory by looking at it so much.

 

If you want to read, just use the form to get the password.
The story is here, once you have the password.

Give me the password, please

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

In this case, I’ve got our cat Marlowe wearing a basket on his head.

I have a novella due.

And the page proofs for the UK editions of Shades of Milk and Honey and Glamour in Glass.

And the revisions for Valour and Vanity.

And book tour for Without a Summer.

Here… have a kitten video.

The first thing you should know is that Delilah S. Dawson’s new book isn’t a vampire novel. At all. Don’t let the fact that some people drink blood fool you for a second. Here’s the cover copy.

True love’s kiss isn’t enough for this Blud princess. But blood and music may win her heart forever. . . .

Delilah S. Dawson’s delightfully dark series takes readers into a clever new world of endless discoveries and sensuous encounters that will leave them breathless.

After four years crammed in a suitcase, drained and unconscious, Ahnastasia Feodor, Crown Princess of Freesia, is not sure which calls to her more: the sound of music or the scent of blood. The source of both is the handsome and mysterious Casper Sterling, once the most celebrated and self-centered musician in Sangland. Fortunately, bleeding one’s subjects dry is expected of Blud royalty. Much to Ahna’s frustration, however, the debauched and reckless enigma—he is definitely not a Bludman, though not exactly human either—is her only ticket back to her snow-rimmed and magical homeland. Ahna needs Casper’s help to defeat an evil sorceress and claim her throne—if she doesn’t drain him first. But as they team up for a harrowing journey filled with pirates and painted ladies, daimons and dashing Bludmen, her craving for blood becomes an unrelenting hunger of the heart. . . .

So what’s her Favorite Bit?

DELILAH S. DAWSON

A beautiful, half-dead princess and a drunk musician face off, a delicate bargain hanging between them. Does she beg him to help her, promise him riches or love?

No, she threatens to kill and eat him and then says this: Nothing shall be more beautiful than your death.

And that’s possibly the only thing that could convince him to help her. That’s where their romance begins.

If you’re a fan of Walt Whitman, you might recognize that quote as a slightly altered line from his poem Starting from Paumanok. It’s the first of dozens of little Whitman Easter eggs scattered throughout Wicked as She Wants, which seems like your basic steampunk paranormal romance but… isn’t.

My Blud series takes place in a parallel universe called Sang where half of the people and most of the wild animals are blood drinkers. Bludmen aren’t magical, undead, or sparkly; they’re simply a long-lived people who subsist on blood and are often ghettoized by the frightened humans. The bunnies are fuzzy little murderballs, and the horses are man-eating monster steeds.

And the world has other twisted versions of what we have on Earth, including analogous historical and literary figures that are slightly skewed. In Sang, Willem Sharkspeare wrote A Big Kerfuffle Over Nonesuch and Mr. Willowbee ran away with Miss MaryAnn in Sagacity and Susceptibility. The book’s heroine, Ahnastasia, is a Sangish version of Princess Anastasia Nicolaevna of the Romanov dynasty, albeit with fangs and talons. But for some reason, Walt Whitman never existed in Sang, which means there’s no version of Leaves of Grass, which leaves the book’s hero, Earth transplant Casper Sterling, sincerely vexed.

I still remember the chills I got the first time I read Whitman and understood that he’d perfectly captured the existential angst, spiritual joy, and earthy passion of humanity. Whitman became the secret muse of this book, and there are dozens of slightly altered quotes from his works in the text. Many of them are said by Ahna, especially at times when Casper might otherwise give up on her, their quest, or himself.

One of my favorite bits is when Ahna finds this written in his journal:

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin
Hoping to cease not until death
Fuck you, Walt Whitman.

Since Casper’s favorite writer doesn’t exist in the new world where he’s trapped, he’s desperate to cobble together as much as he can from the quotes he half-remembers. And it makes him furious that he can’t capture it exactly. Just as he’s a world-class pianist who has never been inspired to create his own unique works, so is he obsessed with
Whitman and focuses on recreating Leaves of Grass instead of writing his own poetry. For Ahna, who has never been to another world and doesn’t know of Walt Whitman, the words come unbidden, simply a part of who she is. And that helps Casper finally accept who *he* is, once he learns to really listen.

Part of the joy in hiding Easter eggs is knowing that every now and then, someone might pick up on one and smile. As an accidental romance writer who rages against the faction of the literary world that looks down on the romance genre, I also take a sneaky pride in mixing “real” literature into a book that Whitman fans might sneer at simply because there’s a buff dude with a ponytail and blouse on the cover and sex spelled out in delicious detail on the pages once Casper and Ahna get down to business.

I believe that reading and writing poetry can be empowering, and I also believe that reading and writing sex can be empowering. Whitman pushed boundaries with his philosophy on love and passion, and I hope that my book, in some small part, pays homage to his playful but serious rebellion.

Please consider this steampunk vampire sex book my barbaric yawp.

RELEVANT LINKS:
WICKED AS SHE WANTS: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Wicked-as-She-Wants/Delilah-S-Dawson/9781451657906
Website: http://www.delilahsdawson.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/DelilahSDawson
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/DelilahSDawson

BIO:

Delilah S. Dawson is a native of Roswell, Georgia and the author of the paranormal romance Blud series for Pocket, including WICKED AS THEY COME, WICKED AS SHE WANTS, and two e-novellas, THE MYSTERIOUS MADAM MORPHO and THE PECULIAR PETS OF MISS PLEASANCE. Her first YA, a creepy paranormal called SERVANTS OF THE STORM will be available in 2014 from Simon Pulse. RT Book Reviews has called her “a wonderfully fresh new voice!” and “on the fast track to the top of the genre!”

If you want to listen, you are welcome to drop in to the Google+ hangout and listen while I read. It will take several days for me to get through the entire book and will include periodic muttering as I try to figure out why I made certain choices.

To join in, I ask only that you mute your microphone while I’m reading. You may make comments in the sidebar. We may occasionally pause for chatter.

The read aloud will start at 10:00 am Central on Tuesday May 1st, using Google Hangouts.

• How do you prepare to write?
• How do you write stories that are important without being heavy-handed?
• Magical realism vs. Fantasy — what’s the difference?
• Do you have recommendations or techniques for serving as a beta reader?
• Is it possible to do a serial with short stories and novellas all in the same setting?
• Why do publishers say they want crossed-genre books, but they’re not publishing crossed-genre books?
• Picture books and books for beginning readers: can you ‘cast on this for us? Answer: not until we’ve got an expert guest in that field. If you want that info, go to SCBWI.org
• Can you do a ‘cast on reading aloud? Answer: yes. This is not that ‘cast.
• What is the primary thing you’ve learned from reading Literary Fiction that has informed your Genre Fiction writing?

via Writing Excuses 8.17: Microcasting » Writing Excuses.

I’ll also perform the tiny little puppet show, and answer any questions you have.

Also, members of the Oregon Regency Society will be in attendance.

If you can’t make it tonight, Powell’s takes pre-orders and I can sign and personalize for you. (800) 878-7323

I hope you can make it out.

I am not that racy, however.

The ball was, as my grandmother used to say, a grand excess. It was lovely to see everyone again and to dance and dine in company.

When: April 25, 2013 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Where: University Book Store
4326 University Way Northeast
University of Washington,Seattle,WA 98105

Some of you have remarked on the back and forth nature of this trip, since I’m alternating between Portland and Seattle for a couple of days. This is why I take the train. I get three hours of down time in which I can’t really do anything except nap, watch the scenery, and write. Carving out writing time on a book tour is tricky at times and this is a good way to make sure it happens for me.

Plus there are a ton of people that I want to see in both cities. Will I see you tonight?

I have two appearances in town and will be reading different material at each. The first is tonight at the SFWA Pacific Northwest Reading Series at the Kennedy School. I’ll be joined by Nebula award nominee Tina Connolly, and Nisi Shawl at 7:00 tonight.

Will I see you there? Frosty adult beverages…

SFWA Pacific Northwest Reading Series

When:  April 24, 2013 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Where: McMenamins Kennedy School
5736 Northeast 33rd Avenue
Portland,OR 97211

The greater Pacific Northwest is home to Ursula K. Le Guin, Kay Kenyon, Jay Lake, Nancy Kress, Brent Weeks, Ted Chiang and Ramona Quimby. Although Ramona isn’t known for her Science Fiction and Fantasy escapades, the rest are, and will be celebrated as part of the Pacific Northwest Reading Series. These free quarterly events provide the Northwest Science Fiction and Fantasy community a chance to gather, network and enjoy readings from local authors.

Each event starts with notes from the host, a leading local author, who has selected two of their favorite writers to complete the evening’s theme. In turn, each is given time to read from their latest work, interpreting and explaining their concepts and vision. In addition, space is provided for networking and conversation.

Set in the pub-like atmosphere of the McMenamins Kennedy School in Portland, OR, events begin at 7:00 pm, and end by 8:30 pm.

About SFWA

Founded in 1965 by the late Damon Knight, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America brings together the most successful and daring writers of speculative fiction throughout the world. Since its inception, SFWA® has grown in numbers and influence until it is now widely recognized as one of the most effective non-profit writers’ organizations in existence, boasting a membership of approximately 1,800 science fiction and fantasy writers as well as artists, editors and allied professionals.  Each year the organization presents the prestigious Nebula Awards® for the year’s best literary and dramatic works of speculative fiction.

Event: SFWA Pacific Northwest Reading Series — Seattle (Kirkland)
Date: 23 Apr 2013 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM PDT
Location: Wilde Rover Irish Restaurant and Pub, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA 98033

SFWA Pacific Northwest Reading Series

The greater Pacific Northwest is home to Ursula K. Le Guin, Kay Kenyon, Jay Lake, Nancy Kress, Brent Weeks, Ted Chiang and Ramona Quimby. Although Ramona isn’t known for her Science Fiction and Fantasy escapades, the rest are, and will be celebrated as part of the Pacific Northwest Reading Series. These free quarterly events provide the Northwest Science Fiction and Fantasy community a chance to gather, network and enjoy readings from local authors.

Each event starts with notes from the host, a leading local author, who has selected two of their favorite writers to complete the evening’s theme. In turn, each is given time to read from their latest work, interpreting and explaining their concepts and vision. In addition, space is provided for networking and conversation.

Set in the festive atmosphere of the Wilde Rover Irish Pub & Restaurant in Kirkland, WA, events begin at 7:00 pm, and end by 8:30 pm.

The next event in the Seattle area (Kirkland, WA) will be held on Tuesday, April 23 and will be hosted by Mary Robinette Kowal, accompanied by Tina Connolly and Nisi Shawl.

About SFWA

Founded in 1965 by the late Damon Knight, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America brings together the most successful and daring writers of speculative fiction throughout the world. Since its inception, SFWA® has grown in numbers and influence until it is now widely recognized as one of the most effective non-profit writers’ organizations in existence, boasting a membership of approximately 1,800 science fiction and fantasy writers as well as artists, editors and allied professionals.  Each year the organization presents the prestigious Nebula Awards® for the year’s best literary and dramatic works of speculative fiction.

Last night they brought me a split of champagne, and now I’m heading off to the wine and cheese tasting. And you wonder why I prefer train travel.

Yesterday, I got some hate mail for a short story that’s running on EscapePod right now. My reaction to it was to laugh and share it with some friends. At some point in your career, someone will write hate mail for the story or novel you have written.

As a general rule: Do not respond. 

Just chalk this person up as not your audience and move one. Responding can be momentarily satisfying, but is not likely to win the person over and will just waste time that you could spend writing.

Don’t let it affect your writing.

Let me take a moment to talk about this particular piece of hate mail in an alternate history sort of way.

Hello,

I just listened to a podcast of your story “Cerbo un Vitra ujo” and it was such a miserably unpleasant experience I felt compelled to contact you and urgently implore you to take other avocation, _anything_ else will surely bring greater reward to humankind than the threat of you producing another work of similar “art”. Even as snuff porn I have seen dramatically better and more elegant prose. It was a pointless, poorly written, obnoxious waste of my time. The only remotely redeeming aspect to it is that I now know I will never have to expend another second bothering to read anything you write.

Please, for the sake of humanity, give up writing and find something else to do with your time.

Fortunately, I just laughed but…

This is a story that I wrote back in 2005, and I was writing way outside my comfort zone. I don’t write horror so I was taking a chance and stretching. Let’s just pretend that I received this in 2005.

I wonder if I would have taken it more seriously. I was a new writer and I can tell you that I hadn’t received any fan mail yet. If this was the first reaction a story of mine provoked… it would have been harder to laugh off.

Even if I didn’t stop writing, would I have played it safe with my fiction? The scene that most people object to is is the rape scene, which is graphic. In my first draft, I faded to black and got the very good advice that it wasn’t fair to skip the difficult scenes. The fact that it was uncomfortable meant that it needed to be on the page or the protagonist wouldn’t earn the scars.

What if I’d gotten this letter and as a takeaway concluded that the advice to write the difficult scenes was wrong? I mean, authors already tend to live with a certain amount of self-doubt. I suspect I wouldn’t have won the Campbell Award, or the Hugo. The man who sent this might have gotten his wish that he would never have to read anything else I wrote.

All of which is to say these things:

1. If you get hate mail, laugh it off. Your future self will.
2. Write fan mail if you like stories, particularly to authors you haven’t heard of before.

It’s okay that people don’t like your stories.

People will give you this line about how hate mail means that you are winning. Not really. Hate mailers are just bullies with words. The real thing to understand is that you are writing fiction that you want to read. There are other people who do enjoy the work you produce. Expecting everyone to like every book is as silly as expecting everyone to like [insert favorite niche musical style of your choice here]. People come with a wide variety of styles, tastes, and expectations. Don’t freak out that your work doesn’t appeal to everyone.

If you are going to write back, do it when you’re in a good mood.

But really, don’t waste your time. If you are going to do it, wait until you are in a good mood so you don’t feed the anger. Flame wars eat fiction. Now… I’ll admit I did break my rules and respond to this one, since he had taken the trouble to write to me. If it had been on a blog, or a review site, I would have ignored it. And this is important — people have a right to dislike your work and express that in their own space. Do NOT respond on blogs or to reviewers. The only time you have any leeway to respond is if they enter your space and even then… best to file and ignore.

I’m cognizant of the fact that this is not setting a good example for you, but… I also know that at some point you’ll reply anyway, and this sums up why I think there are worse things than getting hate mail.

Dear [redacted],

Thank you so much for your email. I’m delighted that my work had such an impact on you. I have often felt that the only thing worse than writing a story that someone doesn’t like, is to be an asshole.

Yours,

Mary

So… come visit me?

Without a Summer

Other than a brief period where it looked like I might not get on the flight because it was oversold, the trip here was without incident. Saturday night, I’m reading at SF in SF with Rick Klaw, which should be fun. He’s promoting an anthology, The Apes of Wrath, that I happen to have a story in. This means that at the reading, I will not be reading the same thing I’m reading on the rest of the tour.

There’s a very good chance that I might be previewing part of the fourth book in the Glamourist Histories, which maybe, might have a monkey in it. Possibly. Anything could happen. I mean, the book doesn’t come out until 2014, so I wouldn’t be so cruel as to tease you with a preview of it, would I?

So… will I see you at SF in SF?

April 20, 2013 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Where: The Variety Preview Room
582 Market Street
San Francisco,CA 94104
USA

Today we have a debut novel, so please give a very warm welcome to Brian McClellan. His epic fantasy Promise of Blood, just came out from Orbit.

Field Marshal Tamas’ coup against his king sent corrupt aristocrats to the guillotine and brought bread to the starving.  But it also provoked war with the Nine Nations, internal attacks by royalist fanatics, and greedy scrambling for money and power by Tamas’s supposed allies:  the Church, workers unions, and mercenary forces.  Stretched to his limit Tamas is relying heavily on his few remaining powder mages, including the embittered Taniel, a brilliant marksman who also happens to be his estranged son, and Adamat, a retired police inspector whose loyalty is being tested by blackmail.  Now, as attacks batter them from within and without, the credulous are whispering about omens of death and destruction. Just old peasant legends about the gods waking to walk the earth.  No modern educated man believes that sort of thing.  But, the thing is, they should.

What’s Brian’s Favorite Bit?

BRIAN McCLELLAN:

One of my favorite things as a reader is meeting new and interesting characters. As a writer, I want to give my audience the same opportunity to enjoy dynamic heroes, anti-heroes, and villains. I’m deeply invested in each of my characters, but, like any parent, I have my darlings. In Promise of Blood, there are three secondary characters that I particularly enjoyed writing.

The first is Olem, a sergeant in the Adran army and bodyguard to Field Marshal Tamas. Olem has a special “Knack”: he doesn’t need sleep. This unique magical talent makes him a prime candidate for his line of work. Olem is calm, collected, and usually seen smoking one of his hand-rolled cigarettes. He’s a perfect right hand man, always ready to dispense advice or carry out an order. The common soldiers look up to him, while none of the officers seem to notice that he wears a beard against army regulation.

Olem may have been the easiest character for me to write. As a man with simple tastes and quiet loyalty and competence, he’s the kind of character that provides an excellent backbone to the narrative.

Mihali is a larger-than-life character. As the greatest chef in all the Nine Nations—and probably the world—he’s earned the title “Lord of the Golden Chefs.” Monarchs open their treasuries to book him for their banquets.

But there’s something not quite… right about Mihali. It could be sorcery. Or he could be insane. Mihali is that delightful character that is unpredictable within the confines of the society in which he resides. He rubs elbows with noblemen, merchants, kings, and peasants, and he believes that all people should be fed equally. He’s the type of man you’d want to spend all afternoon with, even if he does have some absurd ideas about religion. Just don’t call him a cook…

Ka-poel may be my favorite. She’s been the constant companion of Captain Taniel Two-shot for over a year now, accompanying him when he returned from the war in Fatrasta. No one knows much about her—not even Taniel. Her past and her strange, unfamiliar sorcery are a mystery.

Most see her foreign clothes, freckled skin, and diminutive stature and dismiss her out of hand for an “uneducated savage.” Others think she’s an imbecile because of her silence. In reality, Ka-poel is a mute.

Writing a fully realized and interesting character without any dialogue ended up being a great deal of fun. All her communication must be done through hand signs and miming—and Taniel does not speak her primary language. When I first started writing her, I thought that she would be incredibly hard to bring to life. But Ka-poel’s silence became her strength. It allowed me to keep her intentions hidden from the other characters as well as from the reader.

It’s exciting as a writer to be able to create a character that you can empathize with and relate to. It’s even more challenging and rewarding to create characters that the reader feels just as passionately about. After all of the research, world building, and complicated plotting, my ‘favorite bit’ of the writing process is still the characters.

RELEVANT LINKS:

Promise of Blood:  amazon | B&N | indiebound | audible

www.brianmcclellan.com

Twitter @briantmcclellan

BIO:

Brian McClellan lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife, two dogs, a cat, and between 6,000 and 60,000 honey bees (depending on the time of year). He majored in English with an emphasis on creative writing at Brigham Young University, where he was a student of Brandon Sanderson. He attended Orson Scott Card’s Literary Bootcamp in 2006. In 2008, he received honorable mention in the Writers of the Future Contest. His first novel, Promise of Blood, is came out internationally from Orbit Books on April 16th with a sequel, The Crimson Campaign, to follow in February 2014.

There are several new characters in Without a Summer. This is one of my favorites of them, Mr. O’Brien.

Now the image itself is a composite of a couple of different paintings from the period, the base of which is Portrait of an Artist, by Michel Martin Drolling.

Having grown up wearing glasses, I loved the idea of giving them to a dashing young man and making him no less dashing for that. The common meme that glasses means bookish and meek, or nerdily intelligent, has always bothered me.

So Mr. O’Brien wears glasses and… well. Watch him flirt.

A young gentleman leaned against the pianoforte, resting his elbows upon the cloth thrown over it. He was a tall, slender man, with a riot of red hair, which sparkled in the sunlight like ruby to Melody’s gold. His blue eyes were a match for Lady Stratton’s, though a pair of wire- rimmed spectacles framed them. His clothes, which showed all the signs of an excellent tailor, were splashed with mud. There could be little doubt that this was Alastar O’Brien, eldest son of Lord Stratton.

As the Vincents entered, he straightened, the casual nature of his posture altering to something more formal, but none the less attractive for that. “Good afternoon?”

Vincent offered him a short bow and made the appropriate introductions. Jane could never get used to being introduced as Lady Vincent, but she smiled and curtsied. “I see you have already met my sister.”

“I was drawn to the music. It was quite improper, but when one hears a muse, one must follow.” He was quite the gallant.

Looking up through her eyelashes becomingly, Melody said, “I should say that the one who inspires the music is the muse, rather than the one who merely plays it.”

“It depends, I suppose, on where one finds inspiration,” Mr. O’Brien said.

“I have often felt the same way, sir.” Vincent suppressed a smile and almost winked at Jane.

Police officers Quill, Costain, Sefton, and Ross know the worst of London—or they think they do. While investigating a mobster’s mysterious death, they come into contact with a strange artifact and accidentally develop the Sight. Suddenly they can see the true evil haunting London’s streets.

Armed with police instincts and procedures, the four officers take on the otherworldly creatures secretly prowling London. Football lore and the tragic history of a Tudor queen become entwined in their pursuit of an age-old witch with a penchant for child sacrifice. But when London’s monsters become aware of their meddling, the officers must decide what they are willing to sacrifice to clean up their city.

So what’s Paul’s Favourite Bit?

PAUL CORNELL

London Falling is my first urban fantasy novel. (You may know me from my Doctor Who episodes, or perhaps from my comics work. Or not at all, in which case, hi, and thanks for being open-minded enough to still be here on sentence three.) It’s the story of a unit of modern London undercover police who accidentally gain the ability to see the magic and the monsters. After they’ve finished panicking, they decide that the only way they’re going to survive is to use (real) police methods and tactics to try to complete what’s now become a terrifying operation. There’s loads of wry police humour, but it’s actually quite a dark book, a survival novel about the emotions of a group of disparate professionals, thrown together and struggling .

I think the novel actually has a few things in common with Mary’s Glamour books, that, while not realising it at the time, I’d been influenced by her in the writing of it. The force our heroes encounter is ‘the paramilitary wing of feng shui’, something similar to the Psychogeography of the Situationist movement, the power of buildings and landscape (in this case, London) to ‘remember’ beings and events. In other words, it looks and feels like magic, but my inclination (and the police instinct of my leads) is to pick that concept apart, to ask what that means. So, actually, rather as becomes clear of Mary’s series in Glamour in Glass, London Falling is an SF novel wearing another genre’s clothes. It’s actually a ‘clever people solve a problem’ book, in the tradition established by SF editor John W. Campbell.

Now, I should say (because I hate it when someone in a genre says ‘actually, I don’t belong with all these other people, I’m loads better’), that I still wear my urban fantasy… underwear… proudly… (because if the other genre is the book’s clothes, you see where that metaphor came from, but I’m not sure about where it went). London Falling feels and reads like an urban fantasy novel, and that’s exactly what I was aiming for, just as Mary’s books consciously have a dialogue with and do honour to earlier works in the historical fiction genre.

So here’s my favourite bit. (‘Finally’, they say.) My favourite in a certain way, that is. I could equally pick something highly emotional, where there’s triumph or despair, but I think this makes the point I was going for above. Detective Constable Kev Sefton (black, gay, a boxer, tired of how corrupt his undercover partner Costain is, put upon by the world, but starting to have a real interest in how the hidden power of London works), has just taken my other three leads (Costain, DI Quill, and genius intelligence analyst Lisa Ross) on a tour of the supernatural sights of London, to try and orient them in their new world. (They haven’t yet got to… the really terrifying thing.)

They found a Starbucks. ‘In June 1934,’ Sefton read from his laptop, ‘London Transport held an inquest into the death of a bus driver who’d been killed at the junction of Cambridge Gardens and St. Mark’s Road, after he swerved violently for no apparent reason. Other drivers testified at that inquest that they had also had to swerve at that spot, to avoid a double – decker bus – a number seven to be precise, in the livery of the General Omnibus Company – which had become part of London Transport the year before – which “whizzed out at them”, and then disappeared. These appearances happened at two particular times of day, there being a morning service and an afternoon one.’

‘So the bus driver that got killed didn’t stick around to become a ghost,’ said Costain, ‘but we just saw the ghost bus that killed him.’

‘My point,’ said Sefton, ‘is this. You hear stories like that all your life and think: cool, a ghost bus. But now we have to look at this stuff analytically … a ghost bus?! The “ghost” of a motor vehicle? A public conveyance, presumably, which didn’t head towards the light, move on to join the choir invisible in … bus heaven, the great terminus in the sky, where all good buses go when they … I don’t know, break down, but instead is doomed to … drive eternally the streets of Earth! How can there be a ghost bus?!’ He looked between them, hoping they were getting this. ‘There isn’t even any record of a number 7 crashing.’

‘There very probably would have been at least one death occurring on any particularly bus route –’ began Ross.

‘So one death on board is all it takes to make an entire bus into a ghost? Why not ghost houses where people died, or ghost hospitals? Every bit of London would be full of them. Listen, what about those ships you saw?’ He felt the risk of pursuing this, the risk of losing them with theory rather than the sort of factual detail coppers worked with. But Ross had said they should allow assumptions. And more than mere assumption, he was certain, he was starting to put together a working hypotheses. ‘They must have had lots of passengers on them but, in the case of them, as in the case of that particular bus, we don’t see any of those people sticking around to become ghosts. We see the vehicles themselves. When, even if we agree that vehicles can “die” and come back to “haunt” places, one of those ships was sunk somewhere else! So what’s it doing on the Thames? We could find, if we wanted to search the bottom of the sea, what remained of the actual hull of one of those ghost ships of yours, haul it up, restore it to full working order and launch it here, and then there’d be the real ship and its ghost floating on the same river! How does that work? And what about that Jack thing I met? He’s not even a real … person, or vehicle or anything that you might even think could die and haunt somewhere, he’s just an … idea!’

‘You’re saying it’s not always about something that’s died and stays on here afterwards,’ said Costain.

‘But sometimes it is,’ said Quill, ‘like with Harry’s Dad, or the kid that bloke at the football match was carrying.’

There was silence as they considered that.

‘That old fellow at the bus stop saw it,’ said Costain.

‘Yeah, he did,’ Sefton found himself pointing at Costain like he’d got an answer right in a quiz game, and realised how patronising that looked and lowered his fingers. ‘But only for a second … and that’s another thing. I don’t think this is about who’s got the Sight and who hasn’t. I think it’s a … spectrum of who can see what, when and where. That place, for some reason, is where it’s easier for people without the Sight to see the thing. And then it vanished for us too. But maybe we could follow it and see it elsewhere. Or maybe we could see it all the time if we used some of those hand gestures.’

Ross managed one of her awkward smiles. ‘You’ve got something going here,’ she acknowledged. ‘Go on, establish the narrative.’

Sefton shared that look with her, feeling relieved.

I’m hugely proud of this book, and I can’t wait to see what an American audience thinks of it. Thanks for listening, and thanks, Mary, for letting me talk to your readers. Cheerio!

RELEVANT LINKS
London Falling: amazon | B&N | indiebound | Powells

Paul’s blog: http://www.paulcornell.com/

BIO

Paul Cornell is a writer of SF and fantasy in books, comics and television, and has been Hugo Award-nominated for all three media. He’s written Doctor Who for the BBC, and both Superman and Batman for DC Comics. His creator-owned comics series Saucer Country returns next year, and in the meantime he’s writing Wolverine for Marvel. London Falling is his first urban fantasy novel. The sequel, The Severed Streets, is out in the USA next year. He lives with his wife and son just north of London. He’s on Twitter as @Paul_Cornell.

We begin with an audio glitch and a jumbling of our usual intro. Why? Because it breaks rhythm, and sometimes you may actually want to do that.

Narrative rhythm is the pattern of story elements and associated structures that help drive the reader’s pace through a book. Consciously managed, narrative rhythm is a a critical pacing tool, but can also be used to point up important information, increase the impact of certain scenes, and even encourage the reader to take a breather.

We talk about examples from film (it’s not the same thing, but it’s easy to make the point this way), as well as examples from our own work. Scenes and sequels, chapter breaks, cliffhangers, and more all come in to play here.  And of course you, fair listener, want to know how to manage narrative rhythm, and we cover some tips and tricks for that, too.

via Writing Excuses 8.15: Narrative Rhythm » Writing Excuses.

Thanks to the time travel lab at St. Sunniva University, history is no longer a mystery. But when the beloved co-inventor of the university’s time machine is inexplicably smeared across time, academic exploration and the future of St. Sunniva is thrown into doubt.

As assistant to the dean of science, Julia Olsen is tasked with helping Campus Security Chief Nate Kirkland quietly examine this rare mishap…then, just as quietly, make it go away. But when the investigation indicates that the professor’s disappearance may have been a murder, those inspecting the incident unwittingly find themselves caught in a deadly coverup – one in which history itself is the weapon.

From the snow-blanketed walkways of St. Sunniva’s campus to the sun-bleached cobblestone of ancient Pompeii’s roads, The Far Time Incident is a lively romp through history, science, and the academic world in the wake of a crime.

You can listen to a sample of The Far Time Incident Audiobook or pick up a copy at Audible.com.

Now he needs our help.

His sixteen year old son, Ben, was in a longboarding accident and has had massive injuries. He’s been in a medically induced coma for the past week and will need extensive rehabilitation when he wakes up.

So we’re book bombing Dave’s YA novel Nightingale

What’s a book bomb?

Everyone buys the book from Amazon on the same day. This has three benefits.

1. This gives Dave some income.
2. A lot of people buying the books at once spikes the book’s Amazon ranking, raising its visibility and generating even more sales.
3. This link to Nightingale includes Dave’s Amazon Affiliate ID, which sends Dave 7% extra beyond the initial purchase–in fact, after clicking that link, everything you buy during that trip to Amazon will send Dave 7%. Buy someone else’s book, and he gets 7%. Buy a gardening supplies, or a computer, or a kitchen sink, and Dave gets 7%.

Plus, Nightingale is a wonderful YA novel.

Please help Dave and Ben. He’s been there for us. Now it’s our turn to help.

And I’ll be in a Regency costume.

6:30 tonight.

Where: Murder by the Book
2342 Bissonnet Street
Houston,TX 77005
713-524-8597

If you can’t make it, you can pre-order a signed book from the store. They are wonderful, lovely people.

But you’ll be there, right?

Launch Pad is an education/public outreach effort supplementing Mike Brotherton’s space-based astronomical research.  Our primary goal is to teach writers, editors, and those with audiences of all types about modern science, specifically astronomy, and in turn reach their audiences.  We hope to both educate the public and inspire the next generation of scientists.

I highly, highly recommend this workshop.

Go apply now. Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop » About.

As if he needs the help, Brandon challenges Mary, Howard, and Dan to help him brainstorm an A.I. short story. Brandon hands them some setup, and off they go. The ground may have been well-tread in the past, but this particular brainstorming session is full of great ideas that incorporate religion, cargo cults, puzzles, and aliens…

The big challenge here is finding a tale that’s interesting enough and original enough to be worth the telling…

via Writing Excuses 8.14: Brainstorming with Brandon » Writing Excuses.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 is a finalist for both the Nebula and the Hugo award this year. I’m very pleased that he’s stopped by to talk about this novel.

The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity’s only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future.

The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.

So what’s Stan’s Favorite Bit?

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON

My first idea for this was that there should be a romance between a mercurial person and a saturnine person. Clearly that would be an odd couple, but then aren’t they all. Then I decided the mercurial person should be from Mercury and the saturnine person from Saturn. This may be because I had just read a wonderful review of Galileo’s Dream by Adam Roberts, in which he noted in passing that I appeared to be much too fond of the Greek theory of the four humours or temperaments. This is definitely true, and I thought I would double down by going for an even less reputable theory of personalities.

So I liked the idea, but people living on Mercury and near Saturn implied a civilization spanning the Solar System, and therefore one pretty far out in the future. At that point my editor Tim Holman encouraged me to give that far future the full treatment. That seemed like a good idea, but as I got into the writing I could see there was a problem: how convey lots of information about this solar system-spanning civilization without overwhelming the story?

Some will say I didn’t actually solve that problem, but to the extent I did, it came from a formal solution invented by another writer. I had recently written an introduction to John Brunner’s excellent Stand On Zanzibar, which had solved a similar problem by using the method invented by John Dos Passos in his great U.S.A. trilogy. I had owned U.S.A. for over thirty years, but only at this point did I actually read it. Well, it is a great book. It should be read by anyone with an interest in American history or literature, or in the novel as a genre. To me it’s in the running for the mythical Great American Novel.

What Dos Passos did was to create four different kinds of text, and weave them together. The main one follows a cast of characters that continues to grow through the trilogy. Nothing particularly unusual there, although the size of the cast, and the way these characters bounce through their lives like pinballs in a pinball machine, is notable. But added to that main strand are three others: one tells the biographies of prominent Americans of the period, done as prose poems; another gives us newspaper headlines and first paragraphs of news articles of various kinds, characteristic or revealing or funny, or all of these at once; and the third strand is called “Camera Eye” but actually is the stream of consciousness of a single character, unidentified and always seen from inside, not connected to the main strand stories. It turns out these stream of consciousness passages are mainly Dos Passos’s own experiences. All four strands have a great energy, and a kind of crackpot poetry in them, and they add up to more than the sum of their parts. You feel you have experienced the United States between 1916 and 1930 much more fully than most ordinary novels will allow.

So, I adapted all the strands to my own purposes. My main strand follows my characters Swan and Wahram and Genette. The newspaper columns I turned into extracts from all kinds of unidentified texts, and I cut all these texts into minimal pieces to imitate how we read online, linking from one source to the next as we pursue the information we want. The biographies of famous people I had to alter somehow, because I don’t think pocket biographies of fictional people can be as interesting as the same for real people; so I had my biographies be of moons and planets and big spaceships, as these were in effect historical actors in my story. Then lastly I made the camera eye strand be the stream of consciousness of a quantum computer, put in an android body and let loose in the world for the first time.

Doing all this allowed me to include a lot of information that would have been difficult to get into the plot in normal ways, and it also made the whole thing a lot of fun for me to write. I hoped that would translate into making it fun to read too.

I owe a lot to my editor Tim Holman for giving me the vision, and to John Dos Passos for inventing the method.

RELEVANT LINKS

2312 - 2312 | B&N | indiebound

BIO

Kim Stanley Robinson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He is the author of nineteen previous books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, Sixty Days and Counting, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Antarctica. In 2008, he was named a “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine, and he recently joined in the Sequoia Parks Foundation’s Artists in the Back Country program. He lives in Davis, California.

The BBC said its “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” mini-series would be presented in seven hourlong installments, adapted by Peter Harness (a screenwriter and playwright whose credits include “Wallander” and “Is Anybody There?”) and directed by Toby Haynes (“Doctor Who,” “Sherlock”). BBC America said it would show the mini-series during its Supernatural Saturday programming block, which includes science-fiction and fantasy-themed shows like “Doctor Who” and “Orphan Black.”

via BBC to Adapt ‘Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell’ as Mini-Series – NYTimes.com.

What we said.

1. Do you know if the blood is still in the mini-fridge?
2. It’s good in there. Warm, soft… padded rod.
3. Can I stick my hand in him and feel him?
4. Stop! Don’t go past the bunnies. Oh god. Whatever you do, don’t pass the bunnies.
5. I’m about to put the ass of the dog through the sewing machine.

What it really means:

1. Stage blood has a lot of sugar in it so we keep it in the fridge to discourage bugs.
2. I’d just installed a rod in a puppet and the padding was still warm from the hot glue.
3. My colleague wanted to test a puppet.
4. I was shopping for a taxidermied animal and stumbled on a page that had pre-taxidermy animals. It was all fine until a series of horrific pictures after a set of very cute bunnies.
5. Exactly what it sounds like, except the dog is made of cloth.

I’m seriously tempted to order a canvas print of The original art on the cover of Shades of Milk and Honey.

Now, I’ve long been a silent film fan. When I was in middle school, our library used to let us check out a projector and actual film. None of this new fangled video tape for us. It was uphill both ways to school, too. I used to show Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and of course, Mary Pickford. Mostly I watched shorts, because those were the easiest to manage on a small projector.

So, I’ve never seen a feature length Mary Pickford film projected before. I have to say, I understand why she was dubbed the Queen of the Movies. The nuance and range of emotion that she can convey through gesture alone is pretty impressive. In 1916, Photoplay said that she had a ”luminous tenderness in a steel band of gutter ferocity.”

It’s easy to look at some of the gestures now, like the biting of the knuckle, as cliche, but I’m going to bet she’s the person who introduced that into the physical vocabulary of ingenues.

Here’s the film in its entirety, though without any sound whatsoever. Fire up a play list or imagine the live organ, either way, enjoy Sparrows.

There are at present nearly 764,000 combinations of place names. I can’t guarantee that they’ll all make sense. And sometimes it’ll come up with places that actually exist. But when I’ve attempted to write Regencies I’ve always had fun using a similar method to come up with names for my villages and estates and such.

Check out Stuff and Nonsense ~ Regency Place Name Generator.

This year, I deep cleaned the apartment while he was at work, so he came home to a shiny floor and the scent of Murphy’s Oil Soap.

I’m also giving him 24-hours without internet. Since he was at work on his actual birthday, we’re doing the internet free thing today.  This is, in fact, an auto-post that I schedule to go live since the wifi is turned off at the router at the time that you are reading this.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

Do you ever take a vacation from the internet?